1407 - Q & A, The Nature of Saving Belief/Faith.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

And welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1407. Well, it's Friday, and I'm going to answer a question today that I've been asked many times, but an urgent request came in earlier this week, and I wanted to answer a dear friend that lives in the United States, and I'm going to do the best I can to deal with the nature of saving faith today and the aspect of belief. There is much confusion today about what constitutes saving faith. Is it a census? Is it just merely giving intellectual assent? Well, the Bible says in the book of James, chapter 2, that the demons believe and they tremble. They're traumatized when they think of God. Remember, the demons believe that Jesus is who he said he was. As a matter of fact, he was confronted by the demons, and as he did his father's business here on earth in healing and redeeming and doing all that he did, doing the great miracles, remember the demons said, What are you doing here? We weren't expecting you. What's going on? There was shock. Please don't cast us into the pit, to the abyss. And remember, Jesus at one time cast a legion of demons into a herd of swine, of hogs, and they drowned themselves in the Sea of Galilee. But they recognized who he was. Of course they did. So belief obviously is more than just intellectual ascent. This is true because over and over again the scripture says if you and I believe, there are certain things that follow. The word pistus, pistuo, all of that family of words are translated belief, acknowledgement, trust, commitment. So I want to go over that with you and just help you with some scriptures that you need to understand. First of all, the Bible is filled with assumptions. That is, every Bible writer from Moses to John assumed that the people to whom they were writing understood the language. They understood the historical, geographical, and cultural context of the day. Now, this is critical. Every Bible writer from Moses, who wrote the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, the books of instruction, that's what it means, not law. It contains the law, but it's much more. It's instruction about who God is, how we relate to Him, how we got here, how He created the heaven and the earth. All of those things are right there in the Bible. And I, for one, believe that from Genesis 1.1, not from Genesis 3, the Bible's the entire word of God. I believe it's the very words of God. I believe it's the very syllables of God. When God created the heaven and the earth, he told us how he did it, and he told us when he did it and the order in which he did it, and that's divinely inspired. That's the foundation of our faith. And as we believe God's word, then faith is produced by the grace of God. So this idea of belief and the word belief is not only definition of trust, believe, and all of those words that we can use, those synonyms, but it also has connotation. It has an assumed meaning as well. There is no such thing anywhere, let's just go to the New Testament, there is no such thing anywhere as someone believing and not acting upon that belief in obedience. As a matter of fact, I want to encourage you, I don't have time to go over it, but look at Titus chapter 2 and verses 11 through 14, because it says that the grace of God that has appeared to us and given us salvation teaches us. It trains us. The word is the word where we get our word pedagogy. It is discipline training. And what is it? It talks about living a godly life. It talks about walking in service and obedience and living in the expectation of the truth of God's word that Jesus is coming back one day. And so grace teaches obedience. Grace teaches sanctification. Grace teaches a godly life. Grace teaches an expectation of the world to come, that God has created the world, he's going to recreate the world, and we're going to have a new beginning. And so all of that is taught in the book of Titus, chapter 2, verses 11 through 14. And what about one of the most familiar verses of all? For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. That's probably memorized almost as much as John 3.16 by evangelicals. But if you ask the average evangelical congregation, and I've asked above average congregations that have great pastors, that have teaching pastors, that have great disciplined learning, what verse 10 of Ephesians 2 says, it grows silent. Maybe one or two in a great congregation would know. But it doesn't end, the paragraph doesn't end with verse 9 of chapter 2. For by grace are you saved through faith. Yes. It is a gift of God, yes, not of works, lest any man should boast, and we would. But then it says, For we are, that is, and even so the conjunction, the prepositions are there. That is, we were saved from this life of disobedience to a life of obedience. That's the contrast. Verse 10 says, For we are his workmanship, we are his handiwork. And he created us, that is, we were born again, we are a new creation in Christ. That's what Paul told the Corinthians, and we are created as his workers, as his handiwork, for good works that God has preordained that we walk in them. In other words, those who are saved, you are already programmed if you are truly saved in the sense of belief. If you've truly believed, there are some assumptions that come along with that word. The word, the pistuo family, has baggage with it, it has connotation. The expectation is that you're going to walk in obedience. Why? Because that's part of the word pistuo. It's the word for trust, it's the word for commitment, it's the word that assumes there's going to be a life change. You cannot separate in the Bible the concept of belief apart from repentance. Because the two are hand in hand together all the way through. Jesus began to teach and preach exactly what John the Baptist is. Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. The first words out of the mouth of John, of Peter, repent on the day of Pentecost. What was it? What must we do to be saved? He immediately said in Acts 2.38, repent and be baptized. In other words, repentance is the other side of the belief coined because you can't have one without the other. You cannot truly believe in Jesus and have him as your Savior without him being your Lord, your boss, your master, your God, who you worship and serve. It's not just giving intellectual assent that there is a God somewhere. And you say, well, what about Abraham? What about Abraham? When Paul in Romans chapter 4 and verse 3 said, Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, God placed it on his account. That comes from Genesis 15, when a covenant was made with Abraham. The passage in James, in James chapter 2, verses 14 through 26, has to do with Genesis 22, not Genesis 15, where James is quoting about the binding of Isaac, that Abraham proved his belief. He showed his belief. He lived out his belief. God wanted Abraham to do that. God already knew that. When God says to Adam, Adam, where are you? That's anthropomorphically speaking. In other words, God is trying to help us to understand that he was seeking Adam, not the other way. Adam was hiding. When he said, Adam, where are you? It's not that God somehow was playing some hide and seek and he didn't know where he was. He knew where he was. The reason he did that is so that Adam would know where he was. And in the book of Romans, what Paul is talking about is justification that leads to sanctification. And by the way, it does every time. There is no assurance of salvation in the New Testament whatsoever for just praying a prayer and giving intellectual assent. None whatsoever. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, yes, but it always results in godly living. It always results in obedience. And if you're walking outside the will of God, if that is a way of life with you, if your lifestyle is one of sinfulness and disobedience, you have no assurance of salvation. I don't care how many prayers you prayed when you were six, ten, twelve, or twenty five or sixty-five. Praying a prayer does not assure eternity unless that prayer is matched with a heart that is dedicated to God. You won't find that anywhere in the scriptures. You might pull a verse here and pull a verse there, but consistently and confluently and having a consistent hermeneutic, a method of discovery, all the way through the New Testament, you will never read anything like this. And this is why over and over again I say the Jews in the Old Testament or in the New Testament are never saved by sacrifice, by blood offerings, grain offerings, anything like that. Not whole burnt offerings. All of those were expressions of obedient faith. This is why I talk about saving faith, obedient faith, because we have a messed up idea of what belief is in the West. Those of you who are reformed, you look at what John Calvin said about it, you look at what Charles Spurgeon said about it, you look at those reformers, and they will tell you that it has to do with not only a life of faith of one time trusting the Lord, but it's a life of trusting God, which is always displayed through obedience, through following the Lord. After all, the word Talmud, which is the word for the disciples, it's Mathetes in the New Testament, Koine Greek, it always has an aspect of learning and following. It always has an aspect of what we would call discipleship, of training. After all, that's why Jesus was with his disciples, his Talmudim, for three years or so is simply because he was training them. And remember, that doesn't just happen by telling somebody something one time. Training is the word for consistency, it's the word for repetition. Remember, repetition is the mother of learning. That's how we teach our children. And that's how we have to be taught. If you say, Well, I know what you're talking about, well, know it well enough to turn around and teach it to someone else because that's the goal of discipleship. It's not about you, it's about you in order to reach others and teach others. Because the faith was made to be passed on. So please understand that when the Bible talks about belief, it's not talking about intellectual assent, ascensus, it's not talking about notia, taking note or recognition that there is a God in heaven, that Jesus is your Lord and Savior. And you can even believe that you can give intellectual assent. Yes, I believe that Jesus died. He died for my sins, he rose again from the dead. I believe that. However, if there is no life to go with that, there is no life of obedience, there's no life of walking with God, there is no acting out of that faith, then all you've done is given intellectual assent to facts, and that does not compute as saving faith in the Bible. You can look, look it over again. You test it for yourself, but I believe with everything that's within me, following the rules of grammar, following the words and their meaning by etymology, root meaning, and also by usage. Everybody's into etymology. I understand that. Etymology is a great science. It's a great, wonderful language skill to be able to look up roots. But you've got to understand how it was used in that day, and we know how it was used in that day because we have ample evidence in the Bible and in secular literature of Koy Greek, common Greek, just the language of the day. And of course, there's no such thing as intellectual ascent in the Old Testament simply because it was a way of life. You became a God follower, a follower of Hashem, of the God of the Bible, and you acted that out. Now you say, well, there were people that came and gave sacrifices and they didn't really mean it, just like people come today to church and they're just there to be seen or to build relationships or to network for business or whatever the case is. Listen, everybody comes to church is not there because they're coming to worship. I wish that was true, but that's not the case. Some are coming because it's just the thing to do, and they feel like if they don't come, they feel guilty, this, that, and the other because they understand they're accountable to God. But that doesn't mean they're saved. Belief is much more than intellectual assent. It is a life commitment to the God of heaven. And if you truly think and quote, believe that you, by just giving intellectual assent, that you know the facts about who Jesus is and what he's done, but there is no commitment to him, you have misunderstood and made an eternal mistake. And if that's where you are and your life is one of continuing for you to be God, that's what humanism is, when you make the decisions, when you follow God as long as it doesn't cost you anything, you follow God as long as it makes sense to you, you follow God as long as it doesn't cause you to have a repentant lifestyle, then you have missed it, friend. And I want to encourage you in Jesus' name to repent, turn, change your mind about who God is and your relationship with Him, and commit your life to Him. That's what metanoiao, the word for repentance, means to change your mind, which results in a change of thought patterns about who God is and your relationship to him, about who you are, and that you owe God your very life, and that is saving faith always results in love for Jesus. The book of first Peter said to those who believe, to those who believe, to those there's that word believe, Jesus is precious. You do not say someone is precious and never talk to them, live for them, work for them, strive to make them happy and to please them. That's the very nature of someone being precious to you. To those who believe Jesus is precious. Is Jesus precious to you? If he is, you'll live like it, you'll act like it. That doesn't mean you don't sin, that doesn't mean you don't fall short, but it means that the habit of your life is that you desire more than anything to please the Lord. And then you can walk with him on the way. This is Tony Crisp. God bless you. Have a wonderful Friday.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org. Then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.